Friday Round Up: Get Spring Here Already

Gotta lead with the new official international trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road. I would not expect this reboot/sequel to be good on paper but I think it looks fantastic. I hope director George Miller has something to say because the visuals and characters look great!

TV

Three more people have been cast in the upcoming Marvel show Jessica Jones for Netflix. We’ve got Eka Darville (who guest writer Will West recently listed as one of the most successful post-Power Rangers actors), Erin Moriarty and Wil Traval. But who are they playing? Eka Darville will play Malcom, Jessica’s neighbour, Erin Moriarty will play Hope, a client of Alias Investigations, and Wil Traval will play a Police Officer.

SNL had a 3 and a half hour 40th anniversary show bringing back all its biggest cast members. That included Eddie Murphy who only talked for a minute and didn’t really tell any jokes or do any sketches. It was a bit disappointing in a show that was a lot of fun. Supposedly Eddie Murphy is really scared to perform live in front of a crowd these days. Norm MacDonald told a story about it from his perspective writing a sketch that was to include Murphy in an epic Twitter story. It’s all recapped as a single story here.

COMICS

Archie comics are getting a reboot. Archie has been going since 1942, and even though all the characters basically live in a perpetual high school, it’s always basically been the same continuity. Archie #666 will close that out and they’re going to start fresh with a new title by Mark Waid and Fiona Staples (that’s her art above). Archie has flirted with more realistic stories over the past several years in “alternate” type stories and they’ve proven fairly popular so I think we’ll see a less gag-driven and more realistic take on Archie. I would guess it will stay light but will be more relevant to today and feature teens dealing with real issues and relationship fallout.

Princess Leia will be Marvel’s third ongoing Star Wars comic book title. It isn’t out yet but pre-orders for issue 1 have already topped 200,000 which is fantastic these days for comics. To celebrate, they got J. Scott Campbell to draw a variant cover (seen above). It’s okay, I guess. Maybe a little too skinny to be taken seriously as an ass kicking leader of the Rebel Alliance. The comic is all about her journey from homeless princess to leader in the Rebellion which I think sounds like a great idea for a story.

MOVIES

Professional hot lady Morena Baccarin has been cast as the female lead in Deadpool. It’ll star Ryan Reynolds but this time he’ll actually dress in the Deadpool costume and look and act like Deadpool (X-Men: Days of Future Past rewrote history, wiping out his terrible interpretation in X-Men Origins: Wolverine). No word on who she’ll play though. Personally, I’d like it to be someone like Siryn but who knows? Comedian T.J. Miller is in the movie too, probably as Deadpool’s tech sidekick Weasel. Also in the movie is Gina Carano as the relatively obscure mutant Angel Dust, one of the Morlocks. Weird. Oh, and Colossus will be in it but he won’t be played by Daniel Cudmore.

Check out this badass version of Aquaman. Director Zack Snyder tweeted this yesterday. That’s how Aquaman will look in the upcoming Batman v Superman movie, as played by Jason Momoa. I kinda dig it a lot. He’s wearing a pretty close approximation of the costume he wore in the 90s, complete with long hair and beard but instead of being a white blonde guy, he’s a tattooed muscley dude with some color. But I don’t think Aquaman’s ethnicity has ever been an important or defining characteristic (he’s a fish man) so I kinda love this. The phrase “Unite the Seven” could mean the seven seas, as in Aquaman needs to unite his kingdom, but I guess it could also refer to the seven Justice League members for the eventual movie (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg, Martian Manhunter).

Here’s the first unnoficial cast photo of the new Ghostbusters. Actresses Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon were all part of the SNL40 anniversary show and took a photo together backstage. Nice to see them already acting like a team.

The first trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s new horror movie Crimson Peak came out this past week. I have no idea what to make of it. I think it’s about ghosts, which del Toro did in a pretty good, artsy way in Devil’s Backbone. And Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston are pretty good actors. I know my fiance will want to see it for Hiddleston. But it also seems to have Charlie Hunnam doing his not-very-good American accent.

I guess the trailer for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. actually came out last week but we missed it. I think it’s worth sharing because I think it looks like a lot of fun. It’s a spy movie set in the 60s at the height of the Cold War but forces a U.S. and a KGB agent to team up against a rogue Nazi threat. Kinda looks fun and I was not expecting that.

TOYS

This is only available via pre-order in Japan, but Bandai has created an iPhone 6 case that is the Delorean from Back to the Future. $50. I think I’m gonna try to figure out the website and get one.

Hasbro will have a line for Transformers called Combiner Wars featuring their combiner teams. The Constructicons set runs about $150.

FOOD

Little Caesars, the pizza place that has just 2 or 3 pizzas and they sell ’em for dirt cheap, has a new wrinkle to add. Bacon wrapped crust. This is the ideal way to add calories to pizza except Pizza Hut beat them to it when they announced they’d add bacon and cheese stuffed crusts back in December. You lose again, Little Caesars.

SAD NEWS

We are big fans here of Harris Wittels, a comedian. Unfortunately, he passed away yesterday at just 30 years old, most likely due to an overdose. He wrote and produced for tv shows like The Sarah Silverman Program, Eastbound and Down, and Parks & Rec. He had a cool band called Don’t Stop or We’ll Die. He created the concept of the Humblebrag. And he was on a lot of podcasts with Scott Aukerman at Earwolf. We’re gonna miss him. Above is one of his weird conceptual bits.